Trump election: Request for Wisconsin vote recount sent

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has sought recount of the votes in Wisconsin and plans to ask for recount in Michigan and Pennsylvania, too.

NEW YORK (TIP): The election commission in Wisconsin has received a request for a recount of the votes in the state narrowly won by Donald Trump.

The request has been filed by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

Dr Stein has also pledged to file vote recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

A win by Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin alone would not overturn Mr. Trump’s lead – it provides only 10 votes in the crucial electoral college that gave him victory in the 8 November election.

But wins in Wisconsin, Michigan (16 electoral votes) and Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) would have clinched the presidency for the Democrat.

In a tweet, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said: “The Commission has received the Stein and Del La Fuente recount petitions.”

It added that details would be released shortly. Meanwhile, Dr Stein tweeted that the recount would begin next week. Friday was the deadline for the request.

Dr Stein’s campaign needs to raise millions of dollars to cover the fees for the vote recount in all three states. Dr Jill’s website says nearly $5.3m has already been raised toward a $7m target. It says this is enough to fund the recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Voting rights lawyers who urged candidates to request recounts, John Bonifaz and J Alex Halderman, have said the results need to be closely analyzed. The fact that the results in the three states was different from what polls predicted was “probably not” down to hacking, Mr Halderman said. Concerns over possible Russian interference had been expressed in the run-up to the vote.

“The only way to know whether a cyber-attack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence,” he wrote. Pennsylvania’s deadline is Monday, November 28 and Michigan’s is Wednesday, November 30.

US officials have said there was no evidence of election tampering in the three states where Republican candidate Donald Trump had razor-thin victories over his Democratic rival. Mr Trump won 290 electoral votes in the November election, while Mrs. Clinton had 232 votes.

Michigan is yet to declare results. Mr Trump’s camp has made no public comments on the recounts issue.

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